GLAAD Studio Responsibility Index Reveals Lack of LGBT Visibility

GLAAD's annual report tracked the seven largest motion picture studios during the 2013 calendar year to map the quantity, quality, and diversity of images of LGBT people in films. Find out how each stacked up here.

BY Advocate.com Editors

July 22 2014 6:00 AM ET

Above: Delivery Man

Walt Disney Studios

2013 Rating: Adequate

Walt Disney Studios earned an “adequate” rating from GLAAD for 2013, an improvement over “failing” in 2012, but still, of its 10 releases, only two had LGBT characters, and neither film passed the Vito Russo Test.

Delivery Man stars Vince Vaughn as a sperm donor anonymously observing some of the hundreds of offspring he’s fathered. One of them, a son, is gay, and Vaughn’s character watches him encounter several men who seem to be his boyfriends. This inspires “good-natured parental concern” rather than homophobia, according to GLAAD. The gay son is not significant enough for the film to pass the Vito Russo Test, but he is well-handled and even gets to kiss a few of the men in his life. The film provides “a nice change of pace from most Hollywood comedies,” GLAAD reports.

The superhero entry Iron Man 3 features gay TV journalist Thomas Roberts as himself, delivering a bit of news, but his appearance amounts to just two seconds, compared with the eight seconds he got in 2012’s The Avengers, based, like Iron Man 3, on Marvel heroes. Disney recently acquired Marvel Studios, and “we continually hope that Marvel films will include more substantial characters,” notes GLAAD.